Drabbles of Stength and Sorcery
by Runess Flect
Summary: Uploaded 2 chapters. Random, mostly unconnected oneshots loosely set in the Heroes of Might and Magic [HOMM] universe. May or may not incorporate some of the chapters into a longer, coherent story. Reviews would be very appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

Grey Magic or Somthing Like That

* * *

A single man in a simple graying robe stood with his back to the room, pink chalk in hand, scrawling out a single word on the blackboard.

_Magic._

The man turned around slowly, whispering the word slowly, tenderly, the vowels drawn out lovingly until the final choking "c" ruined the gentleness of the sound.

His thin lips and pale skin were visible now, while his single eye remained hidden behind a lid. Where the other eye should have been was instead a smooth layer of skin, appearing eerily natural, as if the man was born with just a single eye.

He opened his eye and surveyed the large, cold room. Large and cold was the room, lined with rows and rows of rotting wooden chairs, all the rows of chairs empty save for an exceptionally rot chair in the last row with a single small occupant listening attentively to every spoken word. Listening to the only spoken word so far in the large cold room, a word that was currently reverberating against the walls, bouncing off again and again, each echo trying to outdo the other, growing louder and louder, shaking all the rotting chairs until the man in the robe raised a single finger to silence it all.

Tilting his head upwards, he spoke, his voice floating its way up to his sole listener.

"Magic. A mystical ability that few inherit, and fewer still are those with the awareness of their abilities. However, with coaxing, studying, practice, and, most of all, luck, one can learn to wield the power of magic. How the mage chooses the method in which he distributes his magic is up to the user; the matters of good and evil are irrelevant to me."

"What I am here is to help you train your body into a special vessel in which magic current can be channeled through. I am here to guide you."

The man paused and glanced upwards.

"I see you have already formed gateways within yourself to access some of the tendrils of magic."

A crackle. The child flicked his eyes off the sage to the chalkboard.

_Fire. Water. Lightning._

"A mage must first learn to twist, break, manipulate, and brandish these basic elements. With these spells as a foundation, he can then learn how to manipulate magical currents, energy, and nature to form the more complicated spells."

"I wonder, how fast and efficient can you be in destroying each word with the corresponding element?"

"First element."

The child stood up. She closed her eyes and rubbed her hands furiously together. The patch of air in front of her face began shimmering, and the shimmering patch of air burst into a single small flame. Her hair singed. The flame drifted away from her face and towards the front of the room. Just before the flame touched the black board, she opened her eyes, thrusted her hands forward, and the flame ignited itself into a burning fire, blackening the blackboard where_ Fire _previously rested. She let out a breath of air and her entire body relaxed back into the rot chair.

"Next, Second element."

The child stood up again. She bit her finger hard, hard enough to draw blood. She blew gently at the blood, and the layers of red blew off until the blood became water. She gave the drop of water one last gentle breeze, floating it towards the chalkboard till it washed away_ Water._

"Last Element."

This time, the child smiled. She rose up her hands, palms facing the cold stone ceiling. The hair around her head rose with her hands and the air became very still. A period of silence. Then the wall crackled. And the chairs crackled. And the whole cold stone room was crackling with light, sparks of light, streaks of light, and the child threw her hands down onto the desk with a crash and in a flash of light all the sparks and streaks smashed together into a single bolt of roaring thunder racing towards_ Lightning._

The robed sage did not flinch when the great impact of the bolt against the chalkboard gave birth to dozens of dancing streaks glinting across the room. The lights slowly subsided.

The grey man in the simple graying robe, pink chalk still in hand, had his thin grey lips in a thin grey smile.

"Neither fast nor efficient, but very powerful for an amateur. I believe you have already found your familiar element."

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- Eh. I originally wrote this over a year ago and decided to just finish it. Most of the second half doesn't flow very well, but at least it's basically finished. Most of the grammar mistakes are deliberately made, however inappropriate they may have had been being. And the word 'thrusted' only exists in my world.


	2. Chapter 2

Underappreciated Guards or Something Like That

* * *

Five days on guard and not a single creature in sight. _Typical._ The guard sighed and slouched against the wall, closing his eyes against the warm sun. Once in awhile, he would open a lazy eye to survey the land before him. Nothing ever changed, of course, the same old dusty road, save for the stray servant girl rummaging through a pile of something or another. Another sigh.

Oh, of course it was_ him_, Ragort Sharpear Flambert, the guard directly under the strict command of one of the Swordhands of the High Queen, _the _Sire Piter Richard Corninram the Dragonslayer, no less, who was widely renowned for slaying a, well, dragon, which is no small feat, especially when that dragon he killed was _the_ dragon of the east, the huge green earthy one that spat out enormous mossy boulders instead of fire and had claws the size of tree branches.

Not that those facts told anything of the_ glory_ of Flambert, the _highly_ respectable man who saved _many_ a maiden from the gnashing, wicked sharp teeth of the Greyfur Wolves, infamous for their _incredibly_ wild tempers and fur the color of ash.

No, no, _no,_ it just _had_ to be him that was assigned to the absolutely _menial_ job of protecting thekitchens. The guards joked that it was 'an upgrade, a promotion' because 'no one had ever been bestowed the _honor _ofdefending the kitchens.' Ha, ha. As if a wolf would _ever_ leap through the window and attack the royal _bakery_.

And for heaven's sake he only landed the job in the first place because the three panicking dishwashers conveniently saw him first and that it was he who jokingly told Corninram of their _great _distress. The dwarvian girls, stricken mad from holding the same job for too long, no doubt, swore by their lives, which really weren't worth much, that they saw a _life-threatening _green _bird_ fly through the window. And they _insisted_ that the bird wasn't an ordinary bird, no no no, _this_ bird was one of the_ sentient _birds of the enchanted forests, of which were long ago burned to the ground by the High Queen and her Elite Sages.

What exactly brought it upon their _maggot-infested_ brains that it was a magical sentient creature? They claimed that the bird _spoke_ to them in a _quaint _little chirp and said, 'Chirpity chirp! Warning to thee, tweet! Kind maids, twitter, who work in these quarters, chirapity chirpy! Dare to con-chirp-sume another one of our kind TWEET and we shall send a CHEEP White down to TWITTER attack!'

All three of them reiterated this, down to the last TWEET, and looked raving-mad during all of it. Of course, the danger of a white tiger is not to be ignored, but when said danger is supposedly heard from the beak of a pigeon, _something_ must be curious.

_Strangely_ enough, _none_ of the chefs or cooks or others in the royal cookery heard or even_ saw_ the magical little _friend_. But that did not stop _dear_ Corninram from doing his civic duty and assigning _loyal _Flambert to protect the kitchens from any perilous threat. It was Flambert's guess that his true intentions were to protect the mangy dishscrubbers from themselves.

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End file.
